-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- The melting glacial ice in places like the Alps , Greenland and the Himalayas is a dramatic visual document of how our planet 's climate is changing .

For U.S.-based environmental photographer James Balog , it is a vision he has spent more than six years trying to record and preserve .

After an assignment for National Geographic in Iceland in 2005 , he was shocked by the changes taking place and wanted to find a way to capture what was going on , in the Arctic and glaciers elsewhere around the world .

The result has been a new documentary film , `` Chasing Ice , '' based on 36 time-lapse cameras looking at 16 different glaciers in locations in Alaska , Bolivia , Canada , France , Greenland , Iceland , Nepal , the Rocky Mountains and Switzerland . Each camera has been taking a photograph every half-an-hour during daylight , producing almost one million pictures in total .

Balog says putting the documentary together has changed his initial skepticism about climate change .

`` What we 've seen has been a complete shock . I never really expected to see this magnitude of change . Every time we open the backs of these cameras it 's like ` wow , is that what 's just happened . ' ''

At one point in the film , Balog is shown looking at the memory card he has just removed from a camera and saying : `` This is a memory of a landscape . A landscape that is now gone and will never be seen again in the history of civilization . ''

Watch : CNN special ` Secrets in the Ice '

Of all the places he has filmed , it is the Arctic that has attracted most attention in recent years . In September this year , the ice cap fell to its lowest extent on record . It grows each winter but is retreating further and further every summer , according to data collected by the U.S. National Snow and Ice Data Center . The summer ice extent has declined by 13 % each decade since the ice was first monitored in 1979 .

Climate scientists have previously predicted the Arctic could lose almost all of its ice cover in the summer months by 2100 . However , the recent accelerated ice losses have led some to believe that date could come much sooner .

While accepting that glacial ice melting has happened many times before in human history , Balog says what he is documenting now can no longer be considered a natural process .

`` What we 're seeing is a much more accelerated rate of change , especially in the past 40 years or so and that has clearly been traced by scientists to the impact of carbon dioxide , methane and nitrous oxide emissions into the atmosphere . ''

`` In the past 100 years , the atmosphere has accumulated 40 % more carbon dioxide in it than had been seen in the peak over the past one million years .

`` So , in the past one million years the peak of carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere has been 280-290 parts per million -LRB- ppm -RRB- . We 're now at 395 ppm and adding more every year . It 's gone beyond natural and is affecting the entire world , '' he says .

Balog , who lives in the Rocky Mountains near Boulder , Colorado , believes the economic and technological solutions to mitigate the impact of climate change already exist .

`` What we need is a greater political and public understanding of the immediacy and reality of these changes . I believe that this film can help shift public perceptions by telling people a story that is real and happening now , '' he says .

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New documentary captures glacial ice retreating at sixteen different locations around the world

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`` Chasing Ice , '' by U.S. photographer James Balog , recorded glacier melt since 2007

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Balog 's cameras have captured nearly one million images for the project

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Balog hopes film will `` shift public perceptions by telling people a story that is real and happening now ''